Tarzan Skills

You want them, right? You'll be a better person if you could swim, dive, climb, and swing like the Lord of the Apes, yes? The Art of Manliness delivers.

From the piece (on how to swing like Tarzan)...

Perhaps Tarzan’s most iconic skill was his ability to traverse the jungle by swinging from vine to vine in the jungle canopy. But interestingly enough, Edgar Burroughs never described Tarzan performing this feat. Perhaps he understood what Hollywood did not: In real life, the vines that Tarzan uses to swing (lianas) are attached at the bottoms of trees, not the tops as in the movies. So swinging from vine to vine sadly isn’t possible in the real world.

Nonetheless, Tarzan did do his fair share of swinging. He would use the limbs and branches of trees like the parallel or uneven bars you see in gymnastics. Tarzan would swing his body back and forth to build momentum so he could hurtle his body through space and to the next limb. Just as primates living in the jungle get around the tree tops. And kind of like the guys in the above video.

I’ll be honest. I like the movie version of swinging Tarzan. As a boy, whenever I saw a rope hanging from some fixed object, I’d instinctively run towards it, leap into the air, grab hold of the rope, and swing as high as I could while giving my best Tarzan yell. I know I’m not the only kid who did this.

While you may never have to perform an uneven bars routine in a tree, you’ll probably have to bust out some rope swinging skills at some point in your life, even if it’s just at a team-building ropes course or at the old swimming hole.

If you’re a grown man, it may have been awhile since you swung like Tarzan. I know my rope swinging skills were bit rusty the last time I tried to swing from a rope and into a river. In my first attempt, I didn’t let go when I should have and ended up landing pretty close to a bunch of rocks near the shore. Not good. And kind of embarrassing.

A few pointers I took from my experience…First, make sure to grab the rope in the middle. Hold the rope tightly. Don’t wrap your legs around the rope as it creates a risk that you’ll get tangled up with the rope when you let go with your hands (this risk is increased exponentially by the wearing of a blue speedo). The true trick to swinging from a rope is timing. I’ve found letting go right in the middle of the upwards trajectory to be the sweet spot. If you let go too early in the upwards arc, you’ll get distance in your drop, but you won’t get as much height. If you let go at the very top of the arc, your drop will have extra height but not as much distance. And of course, if you don’t let go at all, your swing will end up on Youtube and be watched by millions.